Still working on this playfield… I’ve been a bit slack with it over the past week or so.. took a break from it last weekend after posting the last lot of pics, of the lettering and mylar covering, and headed of to Port Macquarie for some sun, sand and surf, and to visit family and friends, while waiting for some new parts to arrive, ie bumper bodies, flipper bats, shafts and bushes.
Now for the fun part… reassembly
when I got home on the Sunday, first thing I did was to polish and install the metal posts. It seems everytime I reassemble a PF I do some thing differently… especially when it comes to polishing. This time I tried some RE-PO paint doctor auto polish. Normally this is used to remove fine scratches in a car’s paintwork. Its also great on plastics/Perspex etc. and as I found out its also great on metal parts for buffing them to a shine. These posts, I mounted them in my electric drill and spun them while holding some rag with the RE-PO on it against the posts to buff them. This worked great as can be seen in the 1st pic.
Some of the post holes had stripped out so I had to fill some of the post holes prior to refitting. I used toothpicks for this, cutting them and tapping them into the holes with a small hammer (and using some wood glue on them as well). I let these dry overnight before fitting the posts.
The 2nd pic shows my hand made flipper linkages, with one already fitted to one of the plungers. I made these from fiberglass PCB, taking measurements from the old linkage for the holes and dimensions. I superglued two pieces together for each linkage, to double the thickness (they’re actually thicker than the originals) so they hopefully last longer! I made linkages for my Stern Lectronamo pin using the same material, about 2 years ago and they’re still going strong. The flippers were totally rebuilt using these, new coil sleeves and bushes, and a new end stop on one flipper (one fell apart when I removed the screws!)
The 3rd pic shows the broken metal guide rail from around the kickout hole, that had dug a hole into the PF. I fixed this by grinding the rivets down, removing the broken angle bracket and making a new bracket, and simply screwing it on with small countersunk head screws. Then I polished it up with the RE-PO polish. This polish also contains wax, so it may also help to prevent corrosion/tarnishing of metal parts.
Last pic shows the PF so far, with all the posts, rubbers etc installed. The bumpers have also been rebuilt in this pic… new bodies, coil sleeves and the rod & ring assemblies cleaned and polished. Just the lamp sockets to be cleaned/repaired, slingshot plungers and sleeves to be fitted, apron repainted, ball trough components to be cleaned and installed.
Also I have to replace a couple of plastics… one missing completely (should be one over the kickout hole) I found out. The other one, above the top drop targets, had a piece broken off and missing. I’ll most likely have to make these myself. I already have the scanned and repaired drop targ plastic on my PC ready to go.
I’ll post some pics of the plastics when done.
